Monthly Archive for July, 2008

On Prizes and Progress

Published
by
Eric
on July 23, 2008
in Energy, Environment, Politics, Space and Sustainability
. Comments

Last month John McCain made a campaign promise that, if elected, he would champion a $300 million prize to develop an inexpensive and powerful automotive battery that could “leapfrog” current available batteries. While the announcement garnered some press coverage, it was covered with fervor in the political as well as technology blogosphere. In fact, it seems to have been one of the most polarizing political announcements in technology and clean-technology investment spheres since a number of candidates promised to make changes in laws regarding carried interest. Tech investors left a number of interesting commentaries on the McCain battery plan. Many deemed the intentions of the plan as noble, but the logistics poor. One of the major arguments, among others, was that the development of such a battery would have a monetary upside that would far outweigh the $300 million prize. Others argued that such money would be better used in some kind of federal R&D program that could foster emerging battery research.

These commentaries got me thinking about prizes and the inherent “carrot and stick” issues that surround such achievement-based prizes. While the clean-tech detractors certainly make interesting and very true points, they’re forgetting the intangible inspiration factor that such a prize could create. An excellent example of such inspiration success could be the $10 million Ansari X-Prize awarded in October of 2004. In the the nine years from introduction to its presentation to the Paul Allen-backed winner Mohave Aerospace Ventures, the prize inspired over twenty-six teams made up of both amateurs as well as professionals to create and successfully launch a reusable manned spacecraft in two separate flights within two weeks. What many fail to point out is that over $100 million was invested in technologies leading up to the two successful Mohave flights.

Wait, isn’t something off here? Why would Mohave and Paul Allen put up ten times the financial muscle into winning a prize that doesn’t even cover the costs of research and development? In the typical investment world such ideas are shear lunacy. In this case wouldn’t it make sense that the prize money merely inspired the group towards the end goal? Why can’t the same true for battery improvements, or wind power, or any other publicly available prize? Isn’t the mere possibility that such a prize could inspire a talented scientist or engineer to shift their efforts towards developing new technology worth forgetting a few logistical shortcomings in a plan?

There however is another important fact that many clean-tech investors have left out. Beyond talk of batteries and prizes, recent campaign statements by both major party candidates illustrate the fact that both candidates are actively interested (at least for now) in making some serious changes to federal energy policy. Placing individual candidates positions aside, if promises from both candidates hold true into a new administration shouldn’t clean-tech investors (as well as the general public) be excited about the possible sea change such policies will bring?

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user AndyArmstrong.

Web Frustration: Partial RSS Feeds

Published
by
Taylor
on July 23, 2008
in Advertising, Blogging, Computing, Consumer Behavior and Web 2.0
. Comments

I’m sure if I thought about it for a moment, I could come up with other blog and web quirks that drive me bonkers (please share your own web-peeves in the comments).  But there’s one in particular that has me rankled this morning: RSS feeds that provide only partial content.

Those of us who use feed readers are well accustomed to major newspapers limiting their feeds to article titles and a sentence or two of summary.  A typical NY Times feed item, instead of a full article, looks like this:

Sticking Together, Up to a Point

from NYT > NYTimes.com Home

The Americans preparing for the Olympic sabre team have come to New York City, always a hotbed of fencing, to train for Beijing with Yury Gelman at the Manhattan Fencing Club.

It drives me nuts that I have to click through to read an article instead of reading without breaking stride on the Google Reader page.  But I accept that advertising pressures–despite the fact that some feeds, even partial ones (*cough*washington post*cough*), have ads embedded in them–will prevent the major news institutions from sharing their content in a more open way.

When the Freakonomics blog moved from an independent site to the NY Times, they experienced a huge amount of legitimate outrage from readers for switching from a full to a partial feed.  In a post to readers, co-author/blogger Stephen Dubner wrote (emphasis mine):

Way back when we first started talking to the Times, they said that they, like most content providers of their sort, favor partial feeds. Why? As much as people like to say that “information wants to be free,” content does not like to be created for free. In order to pay all the writers, editors, photographers, graphic artists, technologists, and the few dozen other kinds of folks who create and curate the Times’s content, most of which is free on the web [...] the Times sells ads on its site. But can’t they sell ads on a full feed, so that feed readers can still get all the content they want delivered to their computers for free without having to visit a single web site? The short answer is yes, they can, and our friends at FeedBurner, who have been distributing our feed, created a great business by doing so. But the Times and its advertisers aren’t crazy about this option. (Nor are they alone, apparently.) Why? This is the fundamental point: many advertisers do not value feed readers as much as they value site readers, since they believe that feed readers are far harder to measure and track.

Enter the most recent source of my web-frustration: Mental Floss.  I’ve read the Mental Floss blog (which is absolutely terrific) for about a year and a half.  While catching up on their prolific feed after a week of travel, I discovered that in early July they switched from a glorious and full feed to a sloppy partial feed.  I’m pissed.

Continue reading ‘Web Frustration: Partial RSS Feeds’

Joel on Tony Snow

Published
by
Taylor
on July 21, 2008
in Politics and Tropophilia
. Comments

Occasional Tropophilia contributor Joel’s letter to the Washington Post was published yesterday.  As someone who witnessed the “sparring” that Joel mentions, the fact that Mr. Snow went out of his way to lend a helping hand to an irreverent undergrad (I mean that lovingly) says a lot.  Well said, Joel:

Howard Kurtz’s appreciation of Tony Snow ["As Good as His Words," Style, July 14] hit the right notes in honoring Mr. Snow’s public service and private life by remembering the “relentless cheerfulness” he displayed at all times and his well-deserved reputation among his colleagues for being a “really genuine guy.”

Yet Tony was at his kindest when nobody important was looking. In spring 2007, while I was still a student at Davidson College, Tony’s alma mater, he befriended me after we sparred — substantively but tactfully — at a student question-and-answer session on campus. Upon hearing that I was moving to Washington, he gave me his number and said, “Give me a call! We’ll bring you into the office.”

“The office,” of course, was the West Wing. For 45 minutes, Tony and I talked about our alma mater, our families, mutual friends and our futures — and it was there that he paid me the greatest compliment anyone ever has, when he mentioned that I reminded him of himself as a young man. I can only begin to hope that my life will be as full of love and friendship as his was.

JOEL HEWETT

Washington

Monday Links: July 21st, 2008

Published
by
Taylor
on July 21, 2008
in Uncategorized
. Comments

I have pages of notes from the conference this weekend that should become blog posts in the next few days.  In the meantime, a few links:

  • Ezra Klein, reporting from Netroots Nation, talks about meat and global warming in the context of Al Gore (did I tell you that Al Gore made a surprise appearance?).  Gore was asked why energy-intense meat production isn’t a larger part of the global warming conversation, and he essentially admitted it needed to be, but that the political realities of encouraging vegetarianism are tough.  Ezra responds:

Gore plays up the political difficulties of advocating for vegetarianism, but there’s a smarter, middle path: If you price carbon, and you rob meat of the massive corn and grain and land subsidies that make it artificially cheap, the market will begin to correct itself in a way that naturally balances the facts that folks — myself included — like burgers and the fact that producing burgers is pretty energy intensive. The problem isn’t that people eat meat, but that we’ve made meat much cheaper than it actually is. Make meat cost what it should cost, and diets will shift to reflect that.  [...] You can deal with meat without advocating vegetarianism.

  • SwitchAbit allows you to update multiple platforms (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc) at the same time.  LifeHacker explains:

A valid reason for never getting back to all those social webapps you signed up for is that updating them all with big news—or just a funny moment—requires a lot of logging in, typing or uploading, and then switching over. switchAbit, a free social syndication tool, offers the tools to create multiple “switches” for all your cool tools. So you can, say, upload a photo on Flickr, then have a link or thumbnail of it show up on your Blogger, Twitter, and your Facebook page.

  • Here’s a clever promotion from bluetooth headset manufacturer Jawbone: if you live in a state or city with a hands-free cell phone law, and you get a ticket for not using a handsfree device, just send in your ticket number and you’ll receive a $20 discount.  As a Jawbone user myself, I recommend the device…even more so if you’re getting tickets.  Wear it in your car, but not walking around town; I’ll let you in on a secret: those people look ridiculous.

Journeys with Jrod — Part II: Moving

Published
by
Jarred
on July 21, 2008
in Journeys with Jrod
. Comments

This is the second installment in a series of posts recording my observations and thoughts during my move from Washington, D.C. to Mountain View, CA.

I write this from my hotel room in Mountain View.  I’ve been in California less than 48 hours.  I’ve managed to get a car, and this afternoon I signed the papers for an apartment.  Tomorrow, I begin orientation as a “Noogler” - a new Google employee.  Just over a week ago, I was in D.C. packing up my things and saying goodbye to my friends.

What the heck is going on?

To be sure, I’ve had doubts along the way.  Did I think this all the way through?  Do I really know what it means to set off to a completely new place, not knowing anyone or anything?  Was I giving up more than I was getting?  Yesterday, I felt those fears acutely as I drove around my new city.  Today, I am stronger.  I have the day of traveling and culture shock behind me.  I now know I’ll have a place to rest my head, and wheels to get me from there to work and back.  And, for whatever reason, I know that I’ll find friends in time.  I also think that after a few days at my job, I’ll be reminded about the reason I came out here — a very good reason.

Continue reading ‘Journeys with Jrod — Part II: Moving’